The city of Denver tracks information about immigrants in the city in an effort to keep up with their special needs. They’ve listed some interesting information about Denver immigrants on their website, a few of which we thought were worth mentioning as well.

An astonishing 16% of all Denver residents are foreign born. While these immigrants are scattered throughout the city, five neighborhoods in Denver nonetheless contain higher populations of foreign-born residents than others do. These top five neighborhoods are Kennedy, Westwood, Barnum, Montbello and Elyria-Swansea.

Within the Denver Public School System, students there speak more than 145 different languages. After our native English, Spanish is spoken by the highest number of schoolchildren, followed by Vietnamese, Arabic, Somali and Nepali.

A good number of Colorado’s immigrants are actually refugees. In all, 1,464 people obtained refugee status and were relocated to Colorado in 2012. According to the city’s website, many of them came to Denver as a result of “civil war, torture, and economic or political oppression.” The primary countries that refugees came from are Bhutan, Burma, Iraq, Somalia, and the DR of Congo.

The state of Colorado also reported that more than 7,000 people here obtained citizenship status in 2012, as compared to 680,000 nationwide. It is not known how many of these new citizens actually reside in Denver. The Office of Community Support and the Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations work together to serve immigrants across the Denver metropolitan area, helping them to integrate into the community and become productive members of our society.